Contemporary abstract experimentalism
Who they?
Harry Edwards is a London-based producer, songwriter, singer and multi-instrumentalist. He hails from Norfolk, but has been based in the capitol for several years, mainly ensconced in the studio of mega-producer Paul Epworth whose Wolftone label is releasing Harry’s debut 12-inch. He’s produced with the likes of trap-soul star 6lack on last year’s ’East Atlanta Love Letter’ album, and has a couple of writing credits on the platinum-selling Rae Sremmurd record ‘SR3MM’.
Why Harry Edwards?
The just-released two moody cuts ’Almost Everybody’ and ‘Nothing’ are doing their damnedest to swerve categorisation. “I do always struggle to describe my music exactly,” he says when we ask him for a steer. “Seems like I’m not the only one, which I guess is a good thing.” It’s rooted in the contemporary mainstream electronic trickery of urban, and cloaked in a sodium glare of twitchy melancholy. But, especially with the instrumental version of ‘Almost Everybody’, the melodic strangeness and fractured architecture inhabits its own sound world. At times it could be mid-century experimentalism, crafted from fragments of ghostly piano, raindrop pulses and room ambience.
Tell us more…
“When I was writing a lot of this music,” he tells us, “I was thinking and writing a lot about early childhood experiences, and so a lot of the abstract sound choices were deliberate in trying to represent, ‘how can I create something that sounds like you’ve not really heard it before…’.” There aren’t many artists with a mainstream track record who discuss psychoacoustics, but Harry Edwards is one of them.
‘Almost Everybody’ is out on Wolftone
